Bathroom Break

In my last post, I told you about my student Andy, who was an excellent football player and a student in my Spanish class. Andy was injured during a football game and missed about a week of school while he recovered.

When he came back, I noticed how different he was. He was quiet, lethargic, and falling behind in his work. This was very unlike him, as he had always been very talkative, social, and hard-working before his injury. I had a suspicion of what was going on because I had seen addiction in other students before, so I kept a close eye on Andy.

He continued missing assignments and sleeping in class for weeks. At this point, it could no longer be blamed on his injury, as he had already had so much time to heal. Andy also started missing class frequently, something he never used to do.

Another strange change in Andy’s behavior was that he started requesting to go to the bathroom every single class period, right around the same time. It took me a while to notice, but when I did, I became suspicious.

One day I had a student teacher assisting me in class when Andy, as usual, asked to go to a restroom. After he left, I told the student teacher I would be right back. I decided to follow Andy to be sure he was really headed to the restroom as he said.

I walked quietly to see where he turned the corners before following after him in the hallways. As I suspected, he did not head to the bathroom nearest my classroom. Instead, he climbed the stairs all the way to the third floor (my classroom was on the first floor) and ducked into the student bathroom there.

At the school where I work, the student’s bathrooms are unisex, and teachers sometimes use the student bathrooms even though we have our own in the teacher’s lounge. I waited a moment and entered the bathroom, and even though what I saw didn’t surprise me, it was still a shocking sight.

Andy and another boy were standing at the row of sinks, and Andy was bent over the counter snorting up a white powdery substance through a straw. I guessed some students did this kind of thing happened sometimes, but it was still disturbing to see the real case of drug use in school.